Iraqi forces battled the Islamic State group in the strategic town of Dawr yesterday as they pressed a major offensive aimed at retaking Tikrit from the jihadists, officials said.
The town lies along one of the main roads that Iraqi security forces and allied fighters are taking to reach the city of Tikrit, and needs to be captured for the anti-IS offensive to move forward.
Salaheddin province Governor Raad al-Juburi said the main street in Dawr had been retaken, while an army major general said periodic clashes were taking place in the town after security forces entered on Friday afternoon.
Ex-president Saddam Hussein was arrested by US forces in 2003 near Dawr, which is also the hometown of Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the most senior member of his regime still at large.
Some 30,000 Iraqi security forces members and allied fighters launched the operation to retake Tikrit on Monday, the largest of its kind since IS overran swathes of territory last June.
Top US general Martin Dempsey said about 23,000 Iranian-based Shiite militiamen and Iraqi soldiers are involved in the offensive, compared to only “hundreds” of IS fighters.
The offensive is not what the Americans would consider textbook military tactics, he said, describing a hodge-podge of Iraqi Humvees, trucks and other vehicles surging toward Tikrit like “rush hour on the Washington Beltway”.
“I wouldn’t describe it as a sophisticated military manoeuvre,” he said.
Dempsey was flying to Iraq to meet US commanders and Iraqi government leaders on Saturday.
Retaking Tikrit from IS militants, who have had more than eight months to dig in since seizing the city last June, poses a major challenge for the country’s nascent armed forces.
The United Nations said on Thursday that an estimated 28,000 people have fled military operations in and around the city.
Sectarian-fuelled revenge killings targeting Sunni Arabs have been a feature of past operations involving Shiite militias, raising international concerns that the same may happen in Tikrit.
